SIGGRPH Art Gallery. (Art Studio).

In honor of ACM SIGGRAPH's 30th anniversary, the conference's 2003 Art Gallery will return to its roots by featuring works that emphasize sculpture and digital prints, as well as today's growing areas of animation and digital video. "The exhibit reflects an exciting time in the acceptance of digital art as a new form of contemporary art," says chair Michael Wright, owner of M Ragsdale Wright Studios, "The art world is no longer focusing on the technology used to create the art. Instead, it is focusing on the art itself and finally giving it the same critical and public attention as traditional fine art."

The exhibit, named CG03: Computer Graphics 2003, contains juried selections along with some curated projects, which, according to Wright, "present a visual force both driven by and reflective of the postmodern mosaic called reality." Unlike last year's focus, which was on behind-the-scenes processes, CG03 highlights "what artists are saying visually about the pluralistic times we live in, as reflected by the diversity of the work," he adds.

A panel of computer graphics professionals and pioneers from all areas of the digital art community, including artist David Era, selected the 269 pieces in the gallery from a record 820 submitted works representative of the diverse interests in both theme and technique used by current digital artists. Of these, 219 are wall art, 34 are sculptures, and 16 are animation and digital video pieces.

"We have more digital video selections this year, which is due to the fact that digital video is a growing art form, which began with the introduction of NewTek's Video Toaster in the early '90s and continues with the array of video editing software available today, all of which provides artists with a means of expression within a video format," says Wright. "Movies and video are moving to a digital environment in which any artist with a computer and a Firewire-enabled DV camera can exercise his or her creativity." Conversely, this year's gallery will contain fewer interactive installations. Instead, works within this genre will be featured in the Emerging Technologies area, where artists, scientists, engineers, and inventors demonstrate practical and speculative interactivity in robotics, graphics, displays, haptics, gaming, the Web, Al, visualization, collaborative environments, design, entertainment, and more.

A sampling of the works from the Art Gallery is shown on these four pages.

Clockwise from top left:

Andy by Dan Baldwin introduces an LCD touch screen within the scene, thereby allowing the static story to transform dynamically. The screen acts as a television, whose varied and often unrelated imagery influences the narrative of the work.